


Reeducation

by BeastOfTheSea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Stockholm Syndrome, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 13:39:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeastOfTheSea/pseuds/BeastOfTheSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his mid-twenties, Tom Riddle is taken captive by a mysterious stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reeducation

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [IsysSkeeter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IsysSkeeter/pseuds/IsysSkeeter) in the [HarryMort_Prompt_Night](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/HarryMort_Prompt_Night) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> we all know those fics were harry wins Stockholm Syndrome.  
> what about a fic where Voldemort or Tom riddle wins Stockholm Syndrome for harry?
> 
> **Disclaimer:** I don’t even own the prompt, much less  Harry Potter.

He didn’t even know how many days he’d been in captivity.

The man who kidnapped him wore the garb of a Dark-creature hunter, and that was all he knew of his captor’s affiliation. He called himself “Harry” Potter, but Tom knew well enough that Harrison Potter was an elderly, retiring wizard – not a cold-eyed, aggressive warrior in his early thirties at best. Judging from the unmistakable hair, he had Potter blood _in_ him, but was either a bastard or the son of some misguided Potter witch the family didn’t like to talk about.

“Potter” had laughed in his face when he’d snapped out his reasoning and, trying to scrabble for any dominance he could, demanded the truth. “The world’s more complicated than you think, Tom,” he said with a smirk, then Cruciated him for his insolence.

As a connoisseur, Tom had to admit he was very good. Almost as good as Tom himself, in fact. And he had never intended to be on the receiving end of _any_ Cruciatus comparable to his own.

He didn’t know what the man wanted with him. The first few times he’d woken up, his captor had screamed and spat curses at him, ranting about events which had never occurred and exchanges which they’d never had, and he’d assumed he was the prisoner of a madman who’d mistaken him for someone else… But once the man had gotten the rage out of his system, he’d turned frighteningly calm, smiling and playing head-games with Tom until Tom tripped over his own words and found himself entangled in his own reasoning.

How _could_ he so firmly insist that Muggle blood dragged down magical talent, when he himself, the greatest student Hogwarts had ever known, carried the blood of that “Riddle” filth in his veins? How _could_ he limit his future armies (and how did the man know about those?) to the pure of blood, when he would be disqualified by his own criterion? How _could_ he so smugly dismiss the need to build alliances across classes and across House moralities, when he intended to rule over not only Slytherin alumni, but the entire Wizarding World?

He knew the answers, ordinarily. He knew the clever twists of mind that would allow him to dismiss all objections, he knew the fatal flaws within his opponent’s argument, he knew all of that, he could say it all…

But not… right… now…

* * *

 The man treated him well enough, he thought foggily.

He was being kept in good conditions – provided that he didn’t fight back or try to escape. When he “behaved” himself, he was moved back into a moderately comfortable bedroom, there to be fed adequate meals and given neutral attention. Dimly, he recognized that the man was keeping him always a little starved for comfort, for food, for good treatment, all the better to make him constantly crave them – but he hardly cared any more. Better that than the makeshift dungeon beneath the location of his comfortable captivity – a place where he was physically assaulted for letting the wrong expression cross his face for a fraction of a second, made to eat garbage if he hesitated in consuming all-but-inedible “food”, and disparaged and mocked constantly for nothing more than existing. And, to add the final insult to injury, kept in a spider-ridden pantry.

A very large part of him wanted to murder the man at great length for reducing him – he, the one who would be the greatest Dark Lord to ever live – to a pathetic prisoner. But a very small yet persistent part of him told him it was his fault, his failing, for letting himself be brought back to the level of a hapless orphan.

Of course, he’d _tried_ to escape with magic. He’d thrown all he had against the man’s wards and entrapments. But it was clear his prison had been prepared far in advance, and he had never _seen_ some of the spells layered upon the chambers of his confinement. “Where did you learn these?” he had asked, prostrate on the floor and gasping for air after exhausting himself in one of his innumerable useless attempts at escape. “These – these _don’t exist_ – there is _no known counter to_ –”

 “They haven’t been invented yet,” the man had said calmly, and then walked away, sealing yet another impenetrable door behind him. And that was all he had ever said on the sources of his unknown techniques.

 A Seer? Well, he was already an evident master of both Dark Arts and its Defense, so why not? It would make Tom laugh and then try not to sob hysterically as he lay in bed in his gilded (and scarlet-dyed) cage. All his hard work – all his hard work and brilliance, and here he was, a helpless captive of a man who wouldn’t reveal his methods, his motives, or even his origins.

 It made him very nearly think he ought to learn from the man. After all, if (still a large _if_ , but shrinking by the day) he couldn’t beat him…

* * *

 “You would have lost,” the man said to him one day, sitting on the edge of the bed. Of course, he was in no danger whatsoever, having placed Tom under several binds and stacking booby-traps in the air around him if he somehow broke them. And, _naturally_ , having put up wards around himself, lest Tom manage to sneak magic past the wards constraining his physical body.

From this, Tom concluded three things: the man was likely less intelligent and capable than himself, and ( _damnably_ ) he knew it, and ( _doubly_ damnably) he would not let pride get in the way of competence.

“I said, you would have lost,” the man repeated. “Dumbledore would have destroyed you. Each and every one of your Horcruxes – gone. Your followers – untrustworthy, incompetent, or both. Your protections – circumvented. Your ideals – shattered, and incapable of being restored in time.”

“In time? In time for what?”

The man’s eyes narrowed, and his lips curled faintly back from his teeth. “Now isn’t the time.” His wand twitched in his hand.

Like an obedient dog – and how the thought _sickened_ him – he obeyed. He bit back, also, the indignant cry that all of this was _pure rot_ , and the man was mad to expect him to believe it (but how did he know about the Horcruxes, _how did he know about the Horcruxes?_ ) –

“You think I’m Dumbledore’s man,” the man said, his tone gone weary and angry. “It’s the only explanation you can find. I’m here to break you and turn you to his side, using the information he discovered through his inexhaustible schemes, and he’ll come in here at the end and spout his cloying gibberish at you, probably offering you a Lemon Drop at the end and giving you a twinkling smile. That’s what you anticipate.”

Tom’s eyes widened, startled; his entire body would have jerked, had he been allowed to move anything below his neck. It was what he had begun to suspect, in his heart of hearts, but – “You’re no Legilimens,” he said, anger seeping into his voice. “How could you –”

Now the man turned one of his hardened smiles upon him, and Tom felt like some young, arrogant beast that had provoked something far older and crueler than it, and that saw it only as prey. “I don’t need that talent,” he said, his green eyes gleaming. “Why would I, when I already know your mind better than you do yourself?” 

* * *

That mantra repeated over the coming – days? Weeks? Slytherin help him, he didn’t know – as the man drilled it into him, his voice a steady drumbeat of defeat. _You lose. You never had a chance of winning. Even death could not stop Dumbledore. The world you longed for molders and falls into ruin. Rome stagnates, and the barbarians – the barbarians come to the gates_.

“And what happens then?” he asked, his voice listless after another stay in the prison – but then, he had known better than to tell the man that he refused to accept that prescribed fate. “Does Dumbledore’s ghost fiddle as Rome burns?”

The man had given him a softer, wry smile at that, and Tom had, horribly, uncontrollably, felt himself relax at that, and his heart leap at the tacit approval. “D’you think I’m the sort to stay around to find out?” 

* * *

Over time, the man began to let his motives slip at last.

In the future, Tom would become the Dark Lord Voldemort. There would be a great war, and he would, over graveyards full of bodies and landfills full of destruction, begin his advance towards victory.

But he would fail. Again and again, when all should have been within his grasp, Dumbledore’s machinations would turn the sweetest ambrosia into deadly poison. As surely as a Gryffindor studying Dark Arts, he would fail catastrophically at the end of every school year. Oh, he would put in a valiant effort. His servants would work tirelessly on his behalf. His schemes were impeccable. But fate itself seemed to be against him.

Not that “fate” was anything more than the excuses of the weak, the man told him soothingly; like the hypothetical Gryffindor, he just hadn’t put in the time beforehand. He’d alienated everyone but his most devoted followers, spent too much time gallivanting around the Continent and not enough undermining Dumbledore at home, gotten all wrapped up in silly Seers’ prophecies like an empty-headed, over-excitable old woman (oh, and how that had _stung_ , with the image of Hephzibah Smith in his mind)… Oh, the man had _boundless_ criticisms of his life’s work, and his life’s work to come. Not even thirty, and apparently he was already on the road to certain doom.

Had he been… himself, he would have sneered in the man’s face. And killed him on the spot, had he had his wand.

But he had not been himself in a very long time.

Part of him wanted to _thank_ the man for all his helpfulness. Had he not volunteered all of this out of – out of the kindness of his heart? And he really didn’t treat him so badly. He could have been much crueler, but it was evident he only wanted to get his way.

And he had indicated, in moments of unguarded feeling (was he so far gone as to think his captor _ever_ did something without calculation? Apparently he _was_ ), that the miserable “prison” was merely a recreation of his own childhood – a testament to how well he knew and understood the rightness of Tom’s hatred of Muggles. Perversely, it was almost sweet of him. He just wanted Tom to get closer to him, to understand how _he_ thought and fel-

( _he was playing obvious games with Tom’s mind, so transparent it stank to behold, why was he falling for it, WHY, he wasn’t that STUPID_ ) 

It was the sedatives the man trickled down his throat, the Calming Draughts in his food, the hypnotic patterns he let the wards trace in the air if he thought Tom was too bleary-headed to catch on, the mind-addling hexes he bounced off Tom’s Occlumency shields just to test they were still there – He was being _played_ , he was being _played_ like the most gullible, weak-minded little Hufflepuff, and Tom was unable to stop it.

 And, half the time, his mind was too drugged to know he _should_ stop it, and, with the passage of time, he was losing the knowledge that he _needed_ to stop it.

* * *

_The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches_ …

But, of course, that was another Dark Lord, and if the past was a different country, then the _future_ was most certainly a different country. And so, as the line went – “ _but that was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead._ ” Or the wizard, as the case might be – But did it really matter?

They had been going round and round in similar circles for hours, and it had begun to hurt to think; numbly, Tom agreed that it didn’t matter. That was another country, and another wench – wizard. The past – future – ought not to matter to them. Let bygones be bygones. Let foregones be foregones. He had been vanquished – he _would_ be vanquished – and so he was vanquished. Or was it the other way around?

His caretaker – _CAPTOR_ – laughed to see his confusion. He was vanquishing Voldemort, of course, but not Tom Riddle. The two were entirely different – were they not? And so Tom Riddle could be guided to succeed where Voldemort was doomed to fail – could he not? Because it had been Voldemort’s foolishness to lead, while Tom the student would follow, and learn by example – would he not?

Naturally. Naturally, naturally, naturally. 

He begged for a sedative, and such an obedient, agreeable young man was given one. 

He gulped it down, shut his eyes, and passed into unconsciousness before he could determine whether that was a compliment or an insult.

* * *

Harry – he no longer cared whether that was the man’s real name, he would enjoy the privilege of calling him by his supposed first name – smiled down at him and handed him a tattered novel.

It was nothing of significance – the Song of Roland, a classic favorite of Gryffindors. (And Harry was a Gryffindor; Harry had told him that much.) Perfect propaganda to get the impressionable in the mood for slaying “pagans”.

And they would be doing that soon – “soon” meaning anywhere from months to a year, the few shreds that remained of the would-be Voldemort reflected bitterly. Harry had to be sure of his loyalty first. After all, he had been so bad to Harry… So very strong-willed. Harry liked that, but his terrible _stubbornness_ had prevented him from learning. And now he was learning. How much better things were!

According to Harry. And he knew better, now, than to argue with Harry.

He knew so well, in fact, that Harry had begun to decrease the dosages of his “medications”. The gradual withdrawal would undoubtedly make him snappish – but Harry had no real worries about that. If he got too snappish, he would be put back on his regime of “medicines”… and he didn’t want _that_ , did he?

No, most certainly, he didn’t want that.

So he thanked Harry profusely for the book – the closest thing to intellectual stimulation that had been given him in a long while – and found himself, to some faint nauseated pang of horror, tearing up at the gift. Harry didn’t have to give him anything, after all. He could have been left in the “prison” for years, as Dumbledore had so cheerfully left Harry.

And to think that this was the generosity Harry showed a former foe! Truly, Harry was a fine man, a wizard worthy of guiding him, and through him the Wizarding World, to…

( _it’s wrong it’s wrong MAKE IT_ STOP)

Harry, no doubt taking note of his breath strangling in his throat, leaned down and kissed his forehead like a caretaker soothing a little child. And that was what Harry was, really. His caretaker. He had been all along. Tom had just been too blind and senseless to see.

And if his lips lingered longer than a caretaker’s… well, no use looking ahead right now. He could look ahead when Harry had deemed him worthy to be freed. Until then, all the future was determined by Harry.

“It will be all right, Tom,” Harry said, petting his hair like a pet’s. “Enjoy your present. You’ve been so good recently, you deserve it.”

“Thank you, Harry,” he said again, and the words burned on their way up from his throat.

“It’s all for the greater good, you know. I would have gone back further and allied with Grindelwald… but he was unstable. Even Dumbledore couldn’t control him. He would have bitten through his own tongue and let himself choke before this…” Harry’s eyes had gone hazy and far-off, the way they sometimes had in the first days of his captivi- _caretaking_. “But you… you’re a Slytherin. Self-preservation matters. You wouldn’t slice off your entire face to spite your looks. You’re _reasonable_. And Dumbledore’s a coward, he could never do the job…”

He rubbed the curse scar on his forehead, his hair falling over his shut eyes. “The future _needs_ a Dark Lord, you understand me, Tom? And I wasn’t it. I tried to be. But it was too late – I didn’t let myself become it at the right time. Another hopeless war… And all the meanwhile, the Muggles were publishing papers, they were talking about hitherto-undetected… esoteric… physics phenomena… something like that… They knew, Tom, they knew, and the only thing left was them _knowing_ what they knew. And once they did… Merlin, Tom, we’d let them go too far for too long, they were to the Muggles of today as the Muggles of today are to savages in huts, and all we’d done for centuries was sit in corners and play with our wands under the bloody Statute of Secrecy… we didn’t stand a…”

He looked up, shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter. Forget my justifications. You don’t need to know my justifications, Tom – you just need to do as I say. Because I know better than you, and I’ve seen things you never will. And thank whatever higher power you believe in for that. Is that understood?”

“Of course, Harry,” said Tom dutifully. “Of course it is.”

…And it would be. As time dragged on, it would be, and he would forget that he ever cared so much for his own will, and he would become entirely Harry’s tool, nothing more than his instrument for preventing that future he could not bear to see.

Time had already dragged him to the point that he looked forward to it.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sorry if I did this poorly, because this is my first story including Stockholm Syndrome and I wanted to get it done before I lost interest in it (like an unfortunate amount of other projects), so I rushed it and skipped over extensive development. If I ever decide to go back to this, I’d probably expand upon scenes I implied and give more detail on what future!Harry was like. 
> 
> I hope it’s somewhat enjoyable despite that. (And I apologize for the lack of outright slash…)


End file.
